Futurama fans, new DVD coming out

New Futurama Gets A Date!
In the words of the Professor, "Oh my, yes!"
by David McCutcheon
August 2, 2007 - On November 27, 2007, Fox Home Entertainment will release Futurama: Bender's Big Score on DVD. The film is the long-talked-about new Futurama material with voice acting from all of the original talent, including guest appearances by Al Gore, Sarah Silverman, and Coolio. It's bound to feature bonus materials and extra features, as well, although none have been announced at this time.

Want to know more about the story? Here it is, straight from the ugly horse's mouth! We're just yankin' your chain, Fox Home Entertainment PR Bot, you're all right!

"As Xmas 3007 approaches, the Futurama crew must fight to save Earth in an epic battle against nudist alien Internet scammers. When the evil naked aliens launch a cyber-attack on Planet Express, they make a shocking discovery: the secret of time travel, mysteriously tattooed on Fry's buttocks. Using their devious nudist software to control Bender, they repeatedly send the beer-fueled robot back in time to loot Earth of its greatest treasures. Bender's rampage through history has shocking repercussions when he encounters Al Gore (guest-starring as himself) during the 2000 Presidential recount. Meanwhile, Leela finds true love, a beloved crew member suffers an embarrassing decapitation, and Fry learns deep secrets about his destiny and his buttocks."

Box art is currently unavailable, but we'll staple it to the back of our eyelids when it's available, and post it here, to boot. Stay tuned to IGN DVD for more on when the next three Futurama DVDs will become available, and tons more on this release. Trust us, we've been on the Futurama train before we were potty trained (since at least 2000 for most of us).

Having recently become somewhat of a fan, I'm looking forward to this.

Likewise. It's a late night favorite of mine when I'm too tired to move. The shift The Simpsons saw from disturbingly neo-realistic sitcom to whimsical, referential farce works a lot better in this setting. It's just a fantastic show.

Futurama is one of my top 5 favorite shows ever. It is most certainly on par with the simpsons, even the 90s episodes. It's so clever and very rarely blatantly obvious. Season 4 added a lot of depth to the show with the addition of the Fry and Leela "will they won't they" love angles in the background of some of the episodes. From what i read last year, season 5 of Futurama with the same cast, and most all the same staff should be starting in summer of 2008. I really hope they don't screw it up. It'd be like if Arrested Development came back in a year or two and just wasn't the same. I wouldn't be able to deal with it. Futurama, Arrested Development, Rome, The Office and 30 Rock are probably the only shows i can think of that i've tried to catch every new episode as it came on in the past 4 years.

FOX executives reportedly did not like the show and by the fourth season, Futurama was being aired erratically.[43] Its time slot was regularly pre-empted by sports events, making it difficult to predict when new episodes would air. FOX also had not aired several episodes that had been produced for seasons three and four. Although Futurama was never officially canceled, midway through the production of the fourth season, Fox decided to let it go out of production and told the writers and animators to look for new jobs.[44] Fox's decision to stop buying episodes of Futurama led Rough Draft Studios, the animation producers, to fire its animators.[45] Futurama was not included in Fox's fall 2003 lineup.[46]

In January 2003, Cartoon Network began airing Futurama episodes as the centerpiece to the expansion of their Adult Swim cartoon block.[47] In October 2005, Comedy Central picked up the exclusive cable syndication rights to air Futurama's 72-episode run at the start of 2008, following the expiration of Cartoon Network's contract. It was cited as the largest and most expensive acquisition in the network's history.[48]

[edit] Future and DVD movies
Current event marker \tThis article or section contains information about one or more scheduled or expected films. The content may change dramatically as the film's release approaches and more information becomes available. \tUpcoming film

After the successful revival of the Family Guy series, 20th Century Fox Television approached Futurama co-creator Matt Groening to produce a direct-to-DVD Futurama movie. On April 26, 2006, Groening noted in an interview that co-creator David X. Cohen and numerous writers from the original series would be returning to work on the movies.[49] On June 22, 2006, Comedy Central announced that at least 13 new episodes were to be produced. Comedy Central also confirmed that Billy West, Katey Sagal, and John DiMaggio would return for the new episodes, with a 2008 debut planned.[2] According to an interview with Cohen, as of December 2006 the Futurama team were around half way through writing the new season, and Rough Draft Studios had just started animating.[50]

The first movie, Futurama: Bender's Big Score is written by Ken Keeler and Cohen, and will include return appearances by the Nibblonians, Seymour, Barbados Slim, Morbo, Robot Santa, the "God" space entity, Al Gore, and Zapp Brannigan.[51] In an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Al Gore confirmed that he would appear as his disembodied head. Cohen has said that Gore would be involved in a storyline which will "show what really determined the outcome of the 2000 Presidential election".[50]

In February 2007, Groening clarified speculation as to whether Futurama had been revived in episodic or feature-film form, saying "[The crew is] writing them as movies and then we're going to chop them up, reconfigure them, write new material and try to make them work as separate episodes."[52] According to Rich Moore the titles of the other three movies are Futurama: The Beast with a Million Backs, Futurama: Bender's Game, and Futurama: The Wild Green Yonder.[53]

A trailer was shown at the 2007 Comic-Con International convention in San Diego on July 28, 2007. A 5-minute trailer was shown to the audience of more than 4,000. All original voice actors still take part in the series, and it will be in widescreen format when released on DVD. After the trailer was shown the panel, including Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Maurice LaMarche, and Matt Groening, answered questions from the audience. Apparently they are working on 4 DVDs to be split into 16 episodes that will air on Comedy Central in 2008.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score will be released on DVD November 27th, 2007. It will be shot in wide screen and also released on Hi-Def DVD (No word on which format).[54]

Always loved the show. But it got old on Adult Swim after a while with the same recurring episodes. They just restarted the cycle the other night too. Lol. But here's the trailer from Comicon if anyones interested. http://youtube.com/watch?v=hEtZHOj4vHo

It's always been an underappreciated show. Across its entire run, it's quality has been more consistent than Family Guy or the Simpsons in my estimation. Unfortunately, it ended up just another show that Fox completely mismanaged.

The thing i love about it more so than last 7 years simpsons or any family guy epsiode ever is that the humor is most often subtle but razor sharp. It's not like family guy where the punchlines and gags are really obvious and the writers spell it out for you as if we needed help recognizing the jokes. Futurama is more like 3-8 seasons simpsons where the jokes kept on coming and if you weren't careful you'd miss something very subtle. Also, there are tons of jokes in the small details that take a few watches or a very careful eye to recognize, also like glory years simpsons. I still maintain that season 4 with the same great humor but also some stellar romantic writing is one of the best seasons of any animated television comedies ever. The Sting, The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings and most of the other episodes from that season are fantastic. I think both of those were nominated for emmys as well, not that emmys/grammys/oscars mean anything these days.

An example of the subtle jokes that Chrono mentioned is the inclusion of Klein's beer in a liquor store as the scene panned over a shelf of beer. The Klein's beer was in a Klein bottle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle). Not something most people would get.

I know there was a thread on it before, but Jurassic Bark was one of my favourite episodes.